Assessment/thought process while acquiring my latest sewing machine

I wrote this post out on tumblr because I've been getting a lot of questions about machines and I thought it might perhaps be a bit helpful and/or interesting for some people, and then I figured I ought to post it here too.

This past Saturday a friend sends me these 2 pics from a yard sale and asks if I'm interested:

Intriguing! Grubby, but I don't see any missing pieces. Two access plates present and accounted for and no gaping holes, good, good. (I'd never heard of Western Electric and I do some quick googling at this point, but it doesn't really affect my choice here.)

It's grainy but I can see the bobbin winder complete with a cam and a little arm that guides thread back and fourth. Behind that the stitch length regulator knob is just visible.

The foot and needle clamp and both sliding plates are there, and the tension assembly looks alright, I can see the little knob at the end of it.

Clearly a vibrating shuttle machine from the orientation of the plates, so hopefully it has bobbins, because those could be hard to find.

Asked friend how much it is and he said $25. (CAD) An agreeable price for a sad old machine!
Hmm, I think. Maybe I can find a hand crank for it, but even if the machine is a total loss, the case would be well worth the price. It's got an intact bentwood lid! None of my current machines have one of those.

The bottom part looks scuffed up, but not warped or falling apart or mouldy as far as I can see in the pictures.

I figure that in the worst case scenario (or. worst machine scenario?) I could remove this machine and somehow alter the hole size to fit one of my two currently case-less machines.

If, at this point, I had wanted to be more sure of the machine itself before buying it I would have asked the friend to:

1. Turn the hand wheel to see if it moves. If it turns, even stiffly, that's good. If it's frozen completely solid then that's pretty bad. (Not necessarily impossible to save, but I've never encountered a seized machine before and I don't know if I'd be able to fix it with my limited tools.)
2. Check to see if there's a shuttle in there, and at least one bobbin. Can't sew at all without those. I probably would have described them as "a little bullet shaped thingy and a little dumbell thingy" and told him to look in the storage compartment on the right side of the case, and under the front sliding plate.

But, having determined the case at the very least was worth having, I say yes. Friend buys it and drives it over and I e-transfer him the $25.
Now I can look at the machine in person! Whee!

Case lid latches securely to the base, good! The handle is rusty but it's screwed on, not riveted, so I'll be able to remove it and take all that rust off.

Yep, still looks like no missing parts. Except for the cord and foot pedal, but I wasn't going to even attempt to use the 100+ year old motor anyways.

(The cover of the storage compartment is missing its knob, but that's easy to fix, and not something that needs to be specific like the actual machine parts.)

The wheel turns fairly smoothly and things appear to be moving as they should. There's dirt and oily gunk, but I can clean that. There are patches of rust here and there, but nothing too huge, and I can sand and polish it off.

I look under the front plate and hooray, there's the shuttle and it's got a bobbin in it!

I slide back the lid of the storage compartment and there's another bobbin, and 3 feet and a quilting guide and a seam guide! (And 4 flaky lead weights that have no business being here, ick.)

No sign of any needles though, which is a bit of a bummer, but there is the rusty stump of a broken one still in the needle clamp.

At this point I've read a bit more on the internet, and I see posts saying that Western Electric made the motors and sold machines branded with their name, but the machines themselves were made by the National Sewing Machine Company. Good to know! I look at some pictures of National sewing machines and some of them are almost the exact same design as this one. Apparently mine's from the 10's or 20's, which seems right judging from the overall style.

They seem to be not super common and also not particularly valuable, but I really don't care as long as it sews.

I look around for National Sewing Machine Company hand cranks and find only one, which is on ebay.

Same manufacturer and same time period, and it's a bit hard to tell from the angle but the mounting part looks like the same size and shape as the flat part on my machine...

But I should find out if anything's wrong with the workings of the machine before I consider buying a rare and expensive hand crank. Normally I just start the disassembly and cleaning before bothering to find out, but in this case I'd better test it right now.

I drop a little oil here and there, but I don't bother to do all the necessary points because it'll all be cleaned anyways and I just need to see if it makes a stitch. I take the rusty needle stump out and it's got the same kind of shank as a standard needle! I try a standard needle and it's too short to catch the tip of a shuttle (very easy to see it doing this if you move the hand wheel without the plate or fabric in the way) but I move it a few mm lower in the clamp and it stitches fine! The upper tension needed to be tightened a lot but that was all.

Someone in a forum post I saw did mention that these machines used a needle that's similar to a standard needle but a bit longer. When I clean & reassemble it I can either move the needle bar a bit lower, or glue a little nub of something in there to stop the needle from going all the way up. I'll probably do the former.

I used the old thread already on the bobbin, so I still haven't tested the bobbin winder, but it spins and looks totally fine. I'll have to replace the crusty old tire and then it should work.
Working machine with 2 bobbins, I will not be wasting my money if I buy a hand crank that fits it.

I want to be more certain that the crank will fit, so I message the seller and ask how far apart the 2 holes are, and how big the flat part is.

I also find this image from a National Sewing Machine advertisement. Oohooo!

Aside from the extra spool pin that looks just like my machine, and the hand crank has the same shape and decals as the ebay one!

The ebay seller messages back with the measurement between the middle of the 2 holes, and the width of the flat part, and it's the same measurements as mine! I also have a closer squint at the pictures and it looks like the spinning part that attaches to the wheel is to one side and the mounting part is to the other side, and the corresponding places on my machine are in the same orientation. I also find a slit in the hand wheel that looks just the right with for that little metal tab with the hole in it.
I am now 99% sure the crank will fit, so I order it. Thankfully it's in BC, so there's no international shipping. The crank itself was $85, but all things considered I think it's a fair price for a rare highly specific over 100 year old piece of equipment that's already clean and oiled. (As of the time I'm writing this it's only just shipped and should be here in a couple of weeks.)

I take the machine out of the case and look at the bottom, and there's a very dead sheet of thin plywood. Moisture has happened to it.

I have a scrap of thin plywood that's just a bit bigger than this, and the rest of the case is not too bad. Some cracks in the bottom to glue, and some chips of missing veneer, but this is fixable.

A good purchase! Things are going exceedingly well!! I've never used a hand crank but I've wanted one for a while, ever since I realized how precise they'd be for free motion embroidery.

I have just started on refurbishing the case, but I'll do another blog post about that when it's done, this one was just about the figuring stuff out & buying stage.

Eggbeater Drill Bobbin Winder

Late last year I learned about bobbinwork embroidery, which involves winding a very thick thread or yarn onto the sewing machine bobbin. Squishy yarns don't do very well in many kinds of machine bobbin winders on account of the little metal tab that's meant to push down on the threads and pop up when the bobbin is full.
I can wind cotton perle on there alright, but I wouldn't want to try it with all 6 strands of a length of embroidery floss.

You can wind by hand while holding the edge of the bobbin between your fingertips, but that's annoying and your fingertips get in the way and make it go on unevenly. 
You can slide the bobbin onto the tapered handle of a large paintbrush and spin it around by hand, which is better, but still slow. And both are a recipe for hand cramps if you have to do a lot for a big project.
(I haven't done shirring, but I think this all applies to winding elastic thread too.)

You can get hand crank bobbin winders meant for weaving (my mother has one) but they're awfully expensive.
But I got an eggbeater drill at an estate sale for 10 bucks earlier this year, and realized it's not that different. It's got a hand crank and a thingy that spins, so surely I could use it for winding bobbins.

I didn't want to attach anything to it permanently, because this is the only drill I own and I need it to still be useable as a drill, so I made a little stand to hold it.
I found a post from 2011 in which someone cut down the side knob to be flatter and just clamped that to the table, but mine is missing that knob, and I'd prefer something more upright anyways. And seeing as how there's a follow up post from the next year about the knob coming off, it probably isn't the most secure.

I have no power tools nor garage space, so I did all this in my sewing room with what hand tools I do have. It's not terribly pretty, but it's functional.

I'd recently dismantled a shallow hardwood desk drawer, and I figured the hole where the lock had been would be a good start for the cutouts that cradle the drill. I clamped one end to the table and used my tiny baby hacksaw to cut it through the hole, off centre so as to have one dip shallower than the other.

I wanted the big end of the hole to hold the narrow part of the wooden handle, and the shallow end to hold the metal end of the drill body. I started whittling away one edge of that end to accommodate the "shoulders", but then realized I wouldn't get enough material out that way.

I clamped it back on the table and sawed what I figured was enough off at a right angle.

It turned out to be a bit too deep to hold the drill shoulders, and the curve of the scooped out bit was too shallow and needed deepening.

I have a rasp that's too big and a file that's much too small, and between them I did my best to make the hole fit the end of the drill.

I made the bigger end of the hole a bit wider too, as it didn't quite fit the drill handle.

Then I cut those end bits down to a good height for the drill stand using my bigger hand saw, which is less neat and precise than the little hacksaw.

After that I figured I ought to cut the width down, since there was already a big cut from where the bottom of the desk drawer had been. I just clamped the pieces onto the already clamped piece with a second clamp, and used my big hand saw again.

I cut that edge off both of those.

Then I had to screw both of those bits down to a base, which was one of the pieces I'd just sawed those short pieces off of.
I found 4 suitable screws in my stash and used my drill to make pilot holes. 

I traced the two short pieces onto the base, marking out the orientations of the cutout ends, and drilled all the way through the base. I clamped one end onto the table so I could drill through the end that was hanging in open air. 

At first I thought it was painfully slow, but then I realized I'd been relying on the weight of the drill and not pushing down, and once I started pushing down it was fine and normal.

I held the stand pieces against the traced outlines and marked through the holes with some ink on a little bamboo stick. I taped the length of the rest of the screw onto the drill bit and drilled those. 

Not having a bench vise, I clamped them on either side of another piece of board so they'd stand up nicely as I drilled them.

Countersink drill bits sound neat but I haven't got any, so I carved away the top edges of the holes with a utility knife.

I got the screw heads pretty well sunk into the wood, but some edges were still sticking out a little bit. 

I don't want screw heads digging into the tabletop, so I glued on a thin scrap of plywood to safely pad the bottom. It was already an ok length to fit in the middle, and I just sliced off one end with the knife and a ruler on a cutting mat. It took a few more cuts than cardboard does, but it's fairly soft plywood.

I clamped that down and let the glue dry.

The rectangle I had cut out of the narrow end was still a few mm too deep to hold the shoulders of the drill, and it was rocking back and fourth, so I built up the sides by glueing a scrap of thick leather on either side of the hollow.

That still wasn't quite high enough to hold it evenly and stop the rocking, so I glued on another layer of slightly less thick leather. After the wood glue dried I trimmed down those edges to go with the angle of the scooped out bit.

I glued on a thin strip of scrap glove leather to each of the 2 levels on that end. Smooth side up, since that side is more grippy on this soft leather.

And a bigger glove scrap on the bigger end.

The wood glue dried pretty quickly and I trimmed off all the overhanging parts with a knife.

Now you can see the stacked up thick leather better.

The drill sat in the cradle pretty snugly at this point, but I needed to tie it down so it wouldn't wiggle around or jump up at all.

I found some appropriate screws and washers in my stash, and cut some more glove leather scraps into 2 long strips with split ends. I punched a hole on the rounded ends.

I drilled more pilot holes and screwed the round ends onto the back with the washers like so. Smooth side down, so the grippy side is touching the drill.

And put the longer screws in the front with the non-threaded portion still protruding from the wood.

I hold the base down to the edge of the table with those 2 big C clamps

and tie the drill in with one regular knot below the screw, and a slipknot above the screw. 

Nicely secure while being easy to undo! And if the straps ever break or wear out they'll be easy to replace.

For the bit that holds the bobbins, I found a small piece of dowel and carved down one end. At first I just shaved off 3 sides in a triangle, but the chuck wasn't holding it very evenly, so I carved grooves into the middles too.
Should have just cut 3 V shaped grooves in from the start instead of flattening the sides.

I whittled and sanded down the other end to be tapered and narrow enough to fit through a sewing machine bobbin, and this is the one thing I'm displeased with. As you can see in the picture, the tip is a little curved. 

I don't know if I did a bad job at carving it, or if the dowel was warped, but the result is that the end wiggles back and fourth by just a couple of millimetres while it's spinning. 

It's still perfectly useable, but if it bugs me too much I can try carving it down more. Or make a new one, I have more dowel this size.

It works! Hooray!

All in all I'm very pleased with it. I've been wanting to experiment with bobbinwork embroidery this year, and this will make it easier. I will edit this post with a link once I have a post up about that.